Its first mission is to protect forests and the surrounding environment against fire. Their overall brief includes managing the New Technologies and Risk Monitoring organisation « PôNT » (Pôle Nouvelles Technologies et Maitrise des Risques). This service works alongside the fire and rescue services to assess risk on a daily basis, using new technologies to process geographic information to this end. The Pônt is a focal point for communication between players in the emergency services sector, and so plays a key coordinating role within the network linking Conseils Généraux, the DDAF, the fire and rescue services themselves, the ONF and Prefectures for the whole of the southern region of France.

 The Entente Interdépartementale’s stated needs...

The Entente Interdépartementale is spearheading development of a geographic database to be put at the disposition exclusively of French forest fire prevention units in France, or the DFCI (Défense de la Forêt Contre l’Incendie).

This database will build upon DFCI documentation for forest trails and pathways, water tanks, hydrants, lookout posts, power lines, obstacles to rescue services (land-slip, obstruction), turnaround points, helicopter landing areas….

Entente Interdépartementale’s first objective is to coordinate a transregional and multi-disciplinary network for partnerships and exchange of services (skills, resources and data). The project aims to provide all services working for the DFCI with cartographic documentation, updated annually, and published from an “intelligent » database.

 GeoConcept’s solution

Building upon the functionalities offered by the GeoConcept GIS, Entente has implemented :
 a DFCI grid generation module for setting up maps in Lambert II Extended (grid system using 2x2 km grid cells)

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 three modules for displaying specified types of coordinates via a dedicated task bar (DFCI, GPS, geographic /distance Azimuth)
 an atlas module that generates multiformat and multi-scale maps
 a decisional aid for dealing with states of emergency incorporating a Zonal Information System for forest fire prevention. This system identifies the precise location of an incident, aids with assigning air and land resources for tackling the fire, and provides a mapped representation of the incident and related events (instantaneous graphi synthesis).

GeoConcept also provides full document handling for communicating operational reports and summary status reports to all parties concerned. GeoConcept’s proposed solution to assist fire and rescue workers in prevention and control of forest fire is a client/server system connected to an Oracle database, enabling :
 position finding on the map (Go to…/ map coordinates / geocoding)
 rapid route finding (optimised route calculation)
 defining perimeters around zones for protection or fire-fighting operations (isochrones)
 publishing cartographic route sheets as rapidly and as simply as possible.

Displaying the map is an indispensable aid to planning and executing firefighting operations in the field, with the possibility of working directly on the map and the cartographic objects it contains as events unfold.

 Benefits

The TANGIBLE BENEFITS of this operation will be an atlas of special purpose maps, designed specifically to assist with defending forests against fire, with maps being continually updated with newly acquired data deriving from users of the GIS in many different locations.

With the support of Entente, SDIS have chosen to employ GeoConcept in their ongoing fight against forest fire : factors crucial to their decision are GeoConcept’s generous data storage capacity, user-friendly interface, and first-rate ergonomics.

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“GeoConcept provides a simple and intuitive solution that permits fire fighters with little or no prior knowledge of GIS to access the full range of GIS functionalities and to manipulate the map to assist them in their work from just one interface. GeoConcept is an object-oriented system : object attributes and map configurations are stored in pairs of GCR and GCM files, making it even quicker and simpler to access maps covering different areas, associated tables, documents or display documents...Fire-fighters can rapidly conduct their own reconnaissance by looking at a zone of interest with GeoConcept’s clickand-display system of view tabs : these are set up to show different aspects of the terrain and selected land features or map objects for the mapped area in rapid succession. Multi-view page displays and the ability to move around the map using pre-saved positions all help with fast thinking when time is at a premium...” asserts the Chief of Staff for Entente’s new technologies pole.